Saint roused, as if from deep thought. He nodded, slid down a ladder, and opened an internal hatch. The cable was threaded neatly.

He tossed it from the seat at the top of the Victory I down to Mischa. Mischa caught it.

It took a minute to hook up. When Mischa turned around, he found Saint staring off into space again.

“She would have liked this garden,” Mischa said.

Saint turned to look.

There was a sound like a wet towel being dropped on hard floor. Mischa and Saint both turned to look.

Bands of flesh reached up and out, gripping Saint. His hands and upper face were lacerated by hidden blades, as he fought to get back and get free. Other tendrils searched him.

“Saint!” Mischa cried out. But words were of no use here.

There was another. A boy running across the hundred-foot-long balcony garden, slingshot in hand.

A Harbinger.

Mischa slapped the switch to turn on the halo. The slingshot released its stone, and the stone was disintegrated by a counterattack.

Mischa activated the rest of the systems. Dangerous to do, when Saint wasn’t in his cockpit. He kicked systems into action, another full-handed strike to one control panel, just to push as many buttons as possible and kick-start things. The hatch began to close up, the sarcophagus sinking into the angel’s chest as the angel rose up into the air, turbines uncharacteristically loud.

He saw the flare of the beam, then heard the impact of the slingshot’s stone striking something overhead. There was no ricochet he could see, no damage—

Except that the open sarcophagus failed to close, the two doors jamming together.

The Harbinger had still managed something.

That made a lot of things a lot harder. Without a pressured cockpit, he couldn’t use his machine’s full capabilities.

Them arriving at an isolated location where they were doing repairs? This had to be Contessa, and the answer to Contessa was distance. Escape. Running the fuck away. That apparently extended to pawns of the woman.

At the same time, however, he could see Saint struggling, fighting someone he couldn’t punch or kick. The man bled from a dozen wounds.

Mischa adjusted settings. He had to reserve some of the halo’s power for any of those slingshot stones. That limited his offense, potentially, he had to exclude Saint himself, control the power so he wouldn’t fry the Victory I’s cockpit, which was ironically more difficult and required more power for the control systems than the full-strength laser would alone…

He typed madly, aware his longtime friend was losing the fight.

Saint fell, or he threw himself back and away from the open cockpit, landing on the platform twenty feet below. It did not look like an easy landing, even with the grass and soil of the garden beneath him.